“Pervasive computing,” which is the emerging trend of embedding computing technology in commonly-used objects and environments, has changed the way data is consumed and generated. For example, the myriad mobile and wearable computing devices available today (e.g., smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.) enable users to access applications and services, such as video streaming, blogging, social networking, etc., around the clock and on the go.
While pervasive computing has clear benefits for end-users, it also increases the burden on service providers that host the applications/services being consumed. For instance, consider a social networking application, or any other application that deals with user-generated content. For this kind of application, a football game, a concert, or a news event can cause a sudden spike in application traffic near the event location due to, e.g., user posts, uploads of photos and/or videos of the event, and so on. Unfortunately, conventional approaches to application infrastructure management (which generally rely on manual/static setup) do not allow service providers to dynamically scale/adapt their server-side resources to meet the demands of such bursty traffic. As a result, the application may fail or become less responsive in these (and other similar) scenarios.